Approaching stories

Social media can be a great way - although be careful not to sound too intrusive. Also, if you can establish a set of contacts you can ask an individual who works at the source you first read the story 🙂

It really does depend on who the person in the news is! A celebrity, politician, author, pop star, fraudster, overseas prisoner, victim of crime or royal prince?! So as SB says, some of those will be contactable via social media, Google etc. Others will have agents, who might be traceable via Google. Even better is if you know someone on a magazine/newspaper who can 'assist' you.

Or if you've got the gift of the gab, you might well be able to ring a rag saying you're going to do an interview for them on person 'A' but just need to confirm a few details! Data protection rules should ensure you don't have any luck, but I have heard of journos helping out other journos in this way. Or just come clean -- 'I'm a freelancer hoping to interview person 'a' and need their agent's details; I'll be pitching the resulting piece to your Ed!' For most people/targets though, I find the web normally gets you very close so I'd suggest that should be your starting point. Good luck!